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PHILOSOPHIC SERIES—No. III. 


C? / 


DEVELOPMENT 


WHAT IT CAN DO 

AND 

WHAT IT CANNOT DO 



JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L. 

t\ 

Author of “The Method of Divine Government,” “Emotions,” etc. 

President of Princeton College 


25 1833 


APD 

/“ i 11 



No. .7. S.ki'J?. 
0/r WASHlN r< 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

1883 


> > 
> > > 


v 









1 BL 

■ Hz 




Copyright, 1883, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Trow’s 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 

201-213 East Twelfth Street 

NEW YORK 


« I 
> « « 


• « 





TABLE OF CONTENTS 


SECTION I. 

Development is an Organized Causation, • 

SECTION II. 

Development is'Causation Working in an Environment, . 


SECTION III. 

Regular Results from Combined Causation and Environ 
ment,. 


SECTION IV. 

Evolution in Inanimate Nature, . 


SECTION V. 

Development in Organic Nature, . 

SECTION VL 

What Development cannot do, 

SECTION VII. 

New Powers Appearing in the Ages, . 


PAGE 

3 


6 


8 


12 


17 


24 


28 




iv TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

SECTION VIII. 

PAGE 

The New Powers Working with the Old, ... .36 


SECTION IX. 

Spiritual Powers, .... 


39 


SECTION X. 

Oversights in Spencer’s Evolution, 


47 



DEVELOPMENT 


WHAT IT CAN DO AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO. 


The phrases Development and Evolution, so frequently 
used in the present day, have much the same meaning. 
Both point to one operation seen under somewhat different 
aspects. Development is the process going on, whereas 
evolution rather refers to the process as we look back upon 
it. We speak of the seed developing into the plant, and 
the plant being evolved from the seed. 

There is a constant employment of the phrases and a 
continued reference to the process. But there is an 
equally persistent avoidance of an explanation of its pre¬ 
cise nature. Instances, many rich and varied, are given, 
and inferences legitimate and illegitimate are drawn; but 
there has not been a wise, judicious, and scientific attempt 
to explicate its components, to spread out its contents, and 
prescribe its boundary. 

The phrases are used to cover all sorts of meanings— 
“ it is a great sheet let down by the four corners upon the 
earth, wherein are all manner of four-footed beasts and 
creeping things of the earth, and fowls of heaven.” Evo¬ 
lution in itself is a great vehicle moving on from age 
to age, and from world to world, carrying with it all sorts 
of wares, precious and baser metals, suns and soils, flowers 



2 


D E V ELO P M ENT. 


and weeds. Scientific men discourse profoundly of tlie 
development of worlds and systems of worlds, of plants 
and animals, of individuals and of species, from the monad 
on to man. But we hear and read also of the develop¬ 
ment of the resources of a country, of its wealth, its mines, 
its gold and silver; its crops and corn, its wheat and 
fruits; of its sheep, cattle, and horses; of its industry, 
its trade and commerce ; of its cities, their streets, houses, 
and harbors; of its education, its colleges and schools. 
They give you histories of the development of the sciences 
of astronomy, chemistry, and geology, of literature in 
prose and poetry; of language from its simpler forms up 
to the higher, such as Greek, German, or English ; of the 
fine arts, as painting, sculpture, and architecture, from their 
ruder to their highest shapes; and of the useful arts, as 
masonry, carpentry, and engine-making. They talk, too, of 
the evolution of things from a simpler to a more complex 
state ; of pottery, of wax-work, of metal-work, of vases, 
of dinner-sets, and tea-cups. It must surely be a compre¬ 
hensive phrase, or quite as possibly a loose and ambiguous 
one, which embraces all these things and a thousand more. 

In these circumstances it is surely of moment, when 
any one is talking of development, for or against, to 
insist on his telling us precisely what he means.by it. “ I 
am sick,” says the man of common sense, who is not to be 
taken in with high-sounding phrases, “ of this pretentious 
power; I prefer the old way of speaking, when it was 
believed that all things came from God.” But I ask this 
man, who is after all making large pretentions to uncom¬ 
mon sense, whether he is prepared to affirm that he was 
not developed from his good father and mother; whether 
he, the man of forty, has not grown out of that boy whom 
he pleasantly remembers going to school at the age of six. 
But I am a religious man, he tells us, and I am sure that 



AMBIGUITY OF THE PHRASES. 


3 


God and not development guides the universe. But if he 
will listen to me, I venture to ask him whether he has 
any right to dictate to Deity how he shall govern his own 
world ; whether by development or in some other way; 
whether God may not have made this man himself to grow 
by development; and whether the same God has not 
evolved the Christian from the Jewish faith, and the Jew¬ 
ish from the patriarchal. When we lay down the rigid 
rule for ourselves, that we explain beforehand what we 
mean by the phrases we employ, we are in a better posi¬ 
tion to require the same on the part of our opponent, 
and to insist on knowing what he means by the evolution 
he is defending. An evolution out of nothing ? An evolu¬ 
tion without a God to set it agoing or to guide it ? An 
evolution of life from the lifeless? Of mind from the 
mindless ? Of man from the monkey ? Of the monkey 
from the mollusc ? Of the mollusc from the monad ? Of 
all from the senseless molecule ? 


SECTION I. 

DEVELOPMENT IS AN ORGANIZED CAUSATION. 

Development is evidently not a simple power in nature, 
like mechanical force, or chemical affinity, or gravitation. 
It is clear that there is a vast, an incalculable number and 
variety of agencies in the process, whether it be the de¬ 
velopment of a sun from star-dust, of the plant from its 
seed, of the bird from its egg, the horse from its dam, of 
the threshing-machine from the flail, of the reaping-ma¬ 
chine from the reaping-hook, of our present kitchen 
utensils from those used by our grandmother. The ques¬ 
tion arises : Is there any unity in “ the thousand and one ” 




4 DEVELOPMENT IS AN ORGANIZED CAUSATION. 


things that act in the process? I believe that there is. 
Let us inquire what it is, and this will settle for us what 
truth and what error there is in the common expositions, 
that is development of developments. 

The one common quality in the process as denoted by 
the phrases is, that one thing is developed into another 
thing, and that one thing is evolved from another. But 
it is universally regarded as settled that when one thing 
produces another, or is produced out of another, it is by 
causation. It follows that there must be causation in de¬ 
velopment. Causation necessitates development. This fol¬ 
lows from the nature of cause and effect as it is commonly 
apprehended. It follows more particularly from the view 
which I have given of Energy in the paper on the subject 
in this series. I have shown that in physical action the 
cause always consists in two or more bodies which act on 
each other, and that the effect consists of the same bodies 
modified ; that the ball A striking the ball B constitutes 
the cause, and that the effect consists of the ball B gaining 
the energy which A loses. But I need not insist on this 
here, as whatever be our theory of causation, the cause 
must be regarded as developing the effect, and the effect 
as evolved from the cause. 

It has been generally admitted for the last two or three 
centuries (it was anticipated in a vague way from the com¬ 
mencement of reflection) that causation works through all 
nature, not only divine causation but physical causation, 
that is, that the ordinary occurrences of nature are pro¬ 
duced by agents acting causally. In other words, fire 
burns, light shines, and the earth spins round its axis and 
rotates around the sun, and as the issue we have heat and 
light, and the beneficent seasons. Men of enlarged minds 
do now acknowledge that in the doctrine of universal causa¬ 
tion, of God acting everywhere through second causes, 


CAUSATION LEADS TO DEVELOPMENT. 


5 


there is nothing irreligious. On the contrary, the circum¬ 
stance that God proceeds in a regular manner which can 
be anticipated, is evidently for the benefit of intelligent 
beings who can thus so far foresee the future and prepare 
for it a 1 id act upon it. But causation leads to develop¬ 
ment. If there be nothing irreligious in causation, as lit¬ 
tle is there impiety in the development which issues from 
it. It will be shown that development by causation is the 
plan by which God carries on his works, thus connecting 
the past with the present, and the present with the future. 
It was my privilege in my earliest published work to jus¬ 
tify God’s method of procedure by natural cause and natu¬ 
ral law, as specially adapted to man’s constitution . 1 I 
reckon it as a like privilege in my declining life to be able 
to defend God’s way of acting by development, which 
gives a consecutive unity to all nature, and as a stream 
from the throne of God flows through all time, widening 
and deepening till it covers the earth, as the waters do the 
sea, with the riches it carries. 

But development, while it is carried on by causation, 
does not consist of a single chain with successive causes 
and effects as its links. The causes as they operate com¬ 
bine and the effects are joint, and we have a great reticu¬ 
lated machine. Development is essentially a combination 
of causes. It is a corporation of causes for mutual action, 
an organized causation for ends. The past has developed 
into the present, which will develop into the future. The 
configuration of the earth, its hills and dales, its rivers and 
seas, which determine the abodes and industries of men, 
and the bounds of their habitation have been produced by 
agencies which have been working for millions of years. 
The present is the fruit of the past and contains the seed 


1 Method of Divine Government, Physical and Moral. 






6 CAUSATION WORKING IN AN ENVIRONMENT. 


of tlie future. The plants now on the earth are the de¬ 
scendants of those created by God, and the ancestors of 
those that are to appear in the ages to come. 

There is through all times, as in the year, a succession 
of seasons; sowing and reaping, sowing in order to reap, 
and reaping what has been sown in order to its being sown 
again. This gives a continuousness, a consistency, to na¬ 
ture amidst all the mutations of time. There is not only 
a contemporaneous order in nature, there is a successive 
order. The beginning leads to the end, and the end is the 
issue of the beginning. This grass and grain, and these 
forests that cover the ground, have seed in them which 
will continue in undefined ages to adorn and enrich the 
ground. These birds that sing among the branches, and 
these cattle upon a thousand hills, will build nests and rear 
young to furnish nourishment and delight to our children’s 
children in millennial ages. Every naturalist has seen a 
purpose gained by the nutriment laid up in the seed or 
pod to feed the young plant. I see a higher end accom¬ 
plished by the mother provided for the young animal. 
That infant is not cast forth into the cold world unpro¬ 
tected : it has a mother’s arms to protect it and a mother’s 
love to fondle it. Development is not in itself an irreli¬ 
gious process; every one who has been reared under a 
father’s care and a mother’s love will bless God for it. 


SECTION II. 

DEVELOPMENT IS CAUSATION WORKING IN AN ENVIRONMENT. 

Science has not determined, and never mav be able to 
determine, what are the original constituents of the universe. 
Some are fond of looking upon them as atoms, some repre¬ 
sent them as centres of force, others will allow them to be 



AGENTS FORM CAUSES. 


7 


only centres of motion—with nothing to move! Whatever 
they be, there must be millions of millions of them work¬ 
ing in the knowable world. 

It is by no means certain that we have been able to de¬ 
termine what is the number of elementary bodies in the 
world. The ancient Greek division into earth, water, air, 
and fire, merely pointed in a rude way to a division of 
states—the solid, the fluid, the vaporous, and the ethereal. 
The number of elements is supposed for the present and 
provisionally to be sixty-five, but most chemists believe 
that some of these may be resolved into components. 

It would be wrong in us to affirm dogmatically that we 
know what are the varied forces, or, as some would prefer 
expressing them, the powers of producing motion. One 
point, however, has been established in our day, that all the 
physical energies are in a sense one; that they are all—be 
it the mechanical, chemical, vital, electric—correlated, and 
that their sum, real and potential, cannot be increased or 
diminished. 

What we have to do is to observe these entities, elements, 
or powers as working, and to notice in particular that they 
operate in the way of evolution. 

These existences, w T ith their energies, combine to form 
causes, and these form combined or organized causes. All 
of them have affinities with each other. Some of these are 
stronger than others in themselves, or from the relative 
position which they occupy. These combine in their action. 
We may represent the agencies at work by the letters of 
the alphabet, A, B, C, etc. A number of these, say A, D, 
P, S, may join and produce powerful individual occurrences 
.—an earthquake, a volcano, a conflagration, a revolution. 
Or they may abide and produce general issues, continued for 
hours, or days, or years. Thus the winds combine and 
go in currents, and we have the trade-winds. Thus the 


8 RESULTS FROM CAUSATION AND ENVIRONMENT. 


waters of the ocean are made to flow in one direction, and 
we have the Gulf Stream, and the cold wave from Labrador. 

But these organized causal operations do not embrace, 
in at least an appreciable or calculable manner, all the 
powers or causes of the universe; they comprise only a 
portion as in conspicuous operation. The causes that pro¬ 
duce a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, may have no percep¬ 
tible connection with those that produce a flood in the 
rivers of America. The moral agencies that produce a 
revolution in Paris, may have no visible relation with the 
discontent which leads the Indians to rise and murder their 
white neighbors in America. But there is no set of causes 
in our world so isolated that they have no connection with 
surrounding causes. Possibly A, D, P, S have some rela¬ 
tionship with B, E, Q, T. These other powers will so far 
act on the organized causation and modify it, it may be in 
the way of strengthening or weakening the tendency, or 
giving a special direction to the stream. While they do 
so, they will themselves be affected, perhaps be absorbed 
or driven off. The winds and ocean currents are all affect¬ 
ed by the nature of the land over which they travel. The 
tides are directed by the nature of the shore, and the sea¬ 
sons, by, it may be, various solar or lunar influences. Every 
combined mundane agency has a sphere, and this sphere 
lias an atmosphere, or an evironment as it is called, which 
it so far sways, and by which it may be swayed. 


SECTION ni. 

REGULAR RESULTS FROM COMBINED CAUSATION AND ENVIRON¬ 
MENT. 

The former is a stream receiving contributions as it flows 
on from the other, which constitutes its banks, that are 
watered by it, it may be formed by it. From the inter- 











>( 


REGULAR RESULTS. 9 

action, specially from tlie unions and separations, there fol¬ 
low certain regularities which are worthy of notice. 

There are courses which go on for a time and then dis¬ 
appear. The wind arises from there being a comparative 
vacuum somewhere, into which it rushes, and then sinks 
because the inequality is so far filled. There is a high 
tide produced when the moon and sun are pulling in one 
way, but it ceases when the two are not acting in unison. 
There are epochs in which certain motives or impulses 
prevail—periods of war and conquest, periods of commercial 
enterprises, periods of the cultivation of the fine arts; 
these have public opinion for a time in their favor, and 
then give way before something else. In all such cases the 
combination of the causes producing the movement is 
loosened and new combinations are formed. 

There are results that abide the same from year to year, 
and from age to age : that stream has for a thousand years 
risen in the same fountain, among the same hills, and 
flowed through the same valleys into the same creek 
of the ocean. Thus there are plants and animals now 
living which have not been visibly changed since they 
appeared millions of years ago in the early geological 
ages. The Chinese have continued much the same in 
character, occupations, and mode of life, for thousands of 
years. In all such cases the same causes have continued 
to act and produce the same effects. In other cases there 
have been irruptions, convulsions, and wars which have 
produced new modes of life; such, for instance, was the 
irruption of the hordes from the northeast upon the de¬ 
caying Roman empire. 

The most curious instances of regularities are those 
which are periodic. A certain combination of causes pro¬ 
duces certain issues, and is then dissolved, to be succeeded 
after a certain time by the formation of a like combina- 


10 RESULTS FROM CAUSATION AND ENVIRONMENT. 

tion and tlie same issues following. It is thus that at 
certain seasons there are daily sea-breezes and daily land- 
breezes. As more marked and obvious we have the 
seasons. “ While the earth remaineth, seed-time and 
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and 
day and night shall not cease.” Here we have sun and 
seed and soil concurring to produce an orderly series of 
events which run their course and are succeeded by a 
like series. Malarial influences are introduced into the 
system, which take a certain time to work and to be cast 
off; and we have diseases lasting four days or ten days or 
fourteen days. We have such a periodic process in every 
plant springing from a seed, and every animal from a 
germ, having a growth and an average life and then dy¬ 
ing, but first producing a new life. We have such periods 
in the movements of the heavenly bodies, as in the preces¬ 
sion of the equinoxes. 

It is more to our present purpose to remark that in de¬ 
velopment there is usually progression. At times indeed 
there is degeneracy, as when plants do not thrive in a nig¬ 
gardly soil, and animals get weaker in a deleterious cli¬ 
mate. But, upon the whole, there has been an advance in 
our earth from age to age. The tendency of animal life 
is generally upward, from all fours to the upright position, 
from which men can look up to heaven. There are spe¬ 
cies of plants and animals which have become larger and 
more robust. Geological causes made our earth fit for the 
abode of man, who had cereals and cattle provided for 
him. Human beings have come to occupy places which 
in earlier ages were handed over to wild animals. There 
is now a larger amount of animal food than in any pre¬ 
vious age. As the ages roll on there is a greater fulness 
of sentient life, and a larger capacity of happiness. The 
average life of human beings in civilized countries is in- 


DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION. 11 

creasing. The intellectual powers have been made stronger 
and firmer, like the trunk of a tree, and the feelings, like 
the flowers, have been made by culture to take a fuller 
expansion and a richer color. 

Under this head may be placed those grand generaliza¬ 
tions which have been so magnified by Herbert Spencer in 
his “ First Principles.” He assumes a Persistence of Force 
in the universe, derived from an unknown and unknow¬ 
able power beneath it. This leads to a constant differentia¬ 
tion and integration ; in simpler terms, a separation of ele¬ 
ments, and again an aggregation. He shows that “ any 
finite homogeneous aggregate must lose its homogeneity, 
through the unequal exposure of its parts to incident 
forces.” Hence the instability of the homogeneous and 
the perpetual motion in the universe. This scattering 
issues in an integration. The result is to change an indefi¬ 
nite homogeneity into a definite heterogeneity, and then 
aggregates of all orders are evolved. Everywhere there is 
a change from a confused simplicity to a distinct complex¬ 
ity, from a diffusion to a concentration. But opposed there 
may be a more powerful attraction which separates and 
diffuses the aggregate : “ Evolution and dissolution as to¬ 
gether making up the entire process through which tilings 
pass.” “ There is habitually a passage from homogeneity 
to heterogeneity, along with the passage from diffusion to 
concentration.” This may be expressed in terms of Matter 
and Motion, “and if so, it must be a statement of the 
truth that the concentration of Matter implies the dissipa¬ 
tion of Motion, and that, conversely, the absorption of 
Motion implies the diffusion of Matter.” In the end, to 
the vast aggregate, even to the earth itself, Dissolution 
must eventually arrive, and “ universal Evolution will be 
followed by universal Dissolution.” 

These generalizations are very wide, and the conclusions 




12 


EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATURE. 


far reaching. Possibly there may be gaps in the processes. 
The giant, in marching on with his seven-leagued boots, 
may have overlooked many agencies which modify his 
theories. He is wrong in declaring that the power under¬ 
neath the persistence of force is unknown and unknowable. 
According to his own account it is so far known, it is 
known to be a power, and a power persisting and working 
certain effects. It can be shown to be a power character¬ 
ized by wisdom and love. He omits certain powers which 
are as patent as those he notices. In particular he regards 
mind as consisting of nerves, and overlooks all its special 
properties—of intelligence, conscience, and will. When 
these are introduced they give a new, and, I venture to 
say, a juster and more attractive aspect to the whole of 
nature. I am not satisfied when I find myself and my 
friends represented as mere developments from homogene¬ 
ous matter, produced by differentiation. But I am willing 
to accept his generalizations so far as the physical powers 
of nature are concerned. 


SECTION IV. 

EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATURE. 

“ Evolution,” says Herbert Spencer, “ is a change from 
an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent 
homogeneity through a continuous differentiation and in¬ 
tegration.” I am willing to take this doctrine, but I have 
to unfold it in my own way, which will be less technical, 
but fully as accordant with facts. 

In nature there is a very large, but still definite number 
of bodies, all acting causally. As they act a number are 
drawn into aggregates by their mutual attractions or af- 








PROGRESSION AND DESIGN. 13 

finities, or their proximity. The action is of the nature of 
causation ; I call it a combined or organized causation. 
Thus, in our mundane system, we have the sun, planets, 
and moons, with a certain shape—an oblate spheroid—with 
a rotation round their axes and round each other. These 
may be regarded as developments produced by differentia¬ 
tion. As a result of the collocation of the sun and the 
earth we have the seasons, with their regularities and their 
irregularities. We have also had the stratified structure of 
the earth, and mountains heaved up, and valleys between. 
All this has arisen very much from combined causation. 
In the aggregates produced there are internal changes go¬ 
ing on. Thus the earth is supposed in the geological ages 
to have become cooled and fitted for the abodes of ani¬ 
mated beings. But the combination of causes is in the 
centre of an immense number of other causes, which mav 
be called its surroundings, or, more technically, an environ¬ 
ment. The aggregate and its environment act on each 
other and produce farther changes, it may be in accumu¬ 
lation, say in adding plant-fostering soil on the earth’s sur¬ 
face, or washing away seas and increasing dry land. 

But there is a second characteristic of development ob¬ 
servable everywhere in nature, and that is a progression. 
There is an advance from a homogeneous to a more differ¬ 
entiated state in which new aggregates with their functions 
appear. This may be produced by accumulations of forces 
breaking out in convulsions, which change so far the face 
of the earth; or more frequently by small increments, as 
the growth of soil by the decay of plants. 

In all this I discover order and design. I do not see 
that the constituents of the world, its atoms or molecules, 
necessarily produce beneficent results. If left to them¬ 
selves they might produce evil quite as easily and naturally 
as good, and might have been formed into destructive 






14 


EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATURE. 


machines and pestiferous creatures, into flaming meteors 
with burning worlds, into serpents and wild beasts devour¬ 
ing each other and arresting all forms of beauty and bene¬ 
ficence, and yet incapable of dying. But, instead of this, 
these million agencies combine to accomplish good and 
benign ends, so as to show that there has been a mind dis¬ 
posing them and an end in view. 

Let us notice, first, that the combination of elements 
acting as causes has produced general laws and beneficent 
order : in the seasons, in the growth of the plant—first the 
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear—in the 
animal enjoying its time, and handing down its life to 
another generation. All this is not the action of simple 
properties acting fortuitously or fatally ; it is the result 
of the adjustment of numerous properties of matter— 
gravitating, mechanical, chemical, electric—all conspiring 
toward an end. 

Secondly, the combination accomplishes special ends, such 
as those so happily illustrated by Paley and other writers on 
natural theology. There are, for example, the joints of the 
bodily frame composed of bones that fit into each other for 
good ends, namely, easy and convenient movements ; the 
firm clasping of the hand, and the simple forward and 
backward motion of the fingers, and the ball and socket 
at the shoulder admitting rotation all round. There are the 
bodily senses—the eye, the ear, and touch—so delicately 
adapted to the external world, with which they make us ac¬ 
quainted. There is the whole animal frame, made up of 
various parts, yet all combining into a living machine of 
exquisite structure. 

Not only is development, when properly understood, not 
inconsistent with religion, it will be found that the com¬ 
bination and adaptation in it clearly argue design. Sooner 
or later there will be written a work on natural theology, 

















DESIGN IN DEVELOPMENT. 


15 


after the manner of Paley, showing that as there are plan 
and purpose in the well-fitted limbs and organs of animals, 
so there is also design, and this quite as evident and as 
wondrous in the way in which, by a process running 
through ages, the bones and muscles have been adjusted 
to each other to produce the horse we drive or ride on. 
There is a manifest beneficent end in the knittings of our 
frame, but there is quite as palpable a purpose in the way 
in which all the parts have been moulded in the geolo¬ 
gical ages, and handed down by heredity. 

I therefore see design in development. There is an ob¬ 
vious end and a means arranged to accomplish it. We 
notice purpose evident in the development which man is 
ever accomplishing. The farmer uses a series of agencies 
to secure a crop: he ploughs, he harrows, he sows seed, 
he weeds, and in the end he gathers in a crop. The teacher 
lays out a plan for developing the faculties of his pupils: 
he imparts knowledge, he corrects, he stimulates, and he 
reaches his aim, the improvement of the mind and a 
fitness for the duties of life. We are ever noticing cases 
in which there is need of co-operation to accomplish an 
end. A house is built and furnished because a number of 
persons have done each his part—the mason, the carpenter, 
the plumber, the slater, the glazier, the upholsterer. A 
city becomes rich because the merchants have been far¬ 
sighted, the manufacturers expert, and the tradesmen skil¬ 
ful and industrious. The country prospers because the 
master and the servant, the schoolmaster and the minister 
of religion, are all and each doing their part. But there 
are still more wondrous evidences of plan, and in the suc¬ 
cession of the seasons, of the grass and grain and trees, 
and in the living creatures advancing in fulness and strength, 
in activity and beauty. It is not in the single operation 
that we discover evidence of a purpose so much as in their 








16 


GOD IN DEVELOPMENT. 


organization and orderly succession and development. De¬ 
velopment is a sort of corporation in which each part, like 
the citizen, fulfils its office . 1 

Evolution is not, any more than gravitation, chemical 
affinity, or any other power or law of nature, an irreligious 
process. Spencer accounts for all its operations by the per¬ 
sistence of force beneath, and behind which he feels him¬ 
self obliged to place an unknown power. I, too, am obliged 
to place such a power ; but to me it is so far a known power. 
There is more in the production than the persistence of 
force; there is an arrangement of all the evolved and in¬ 
volved powers to work for an end, and in this I perceive 
design and intelligence. I do not stand up for a develop¬ 
ment any more than I do for a gravitation independent of 
God. I see God in the persistence of force, and in the 
beneficent way in which it works. I can see a good pur¬ 
pose worthy of God served by universal gravitation, in 
binding together all the parts of the universe, however 
widely sundered. But I can also discover it to be a benefi¬ 
cent arrangement, whereby by evolution the present is con¬ 
nected with the past and the future, and the most remote 
times are brought together. I do not say that God could 
not have accomplished these ends in some other way, but 
he has actually effected them by means of causation and 
evolution, and I bless him for it. 

I see God in development throughout, and from begin¬ 
ning to end. Because a rose, a dog, or horse is gendered by 
natural causes, it is not less the work of God. Our finest 
roses are derived from the common dog rose of Europe {Rosa 

1 I am not here constructing or defending the theistic argument. If 
it be objected that the existence of pain sets aside teleology, I simply 
say that I am not to enter on the subject of the mystery of evil, but I 
hold that there may be evidence of the existence both of suffering and 
of love in one and the same world. 





DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. 


17 


canina): that rose with its simple beauty by the roadside is 
the divine workmanship ; but so is the rose with the fullest 
form and the gayest color in our gardens. God, who rewards 
us for opening our eyes upon his works, gives higher rewards 
to those who, in love to him, or to them, bestow labor and 
pains upon them. Gogs, it is said, have descended from 
some kind of wolf. This does not make the highly de¬ 
veloped shepherd or St. Bernard dog, with their won¬ 
drous instincts, not to be the divine workmanship. Just 
as little does the hypothesis that our living horse is de¬ 
scended from the pliohippos, and this from the miohippos, 
and this again from the small eohippos, which used to 
tread wdth its five toes on marshy ground, prove that the 
animal we ride on, so useful and so graceful, so agile, and 
so docile, is not the creature of the Creator who formed it 
and endowed it with the power of evolution. 


SECTION V. 

DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. 

There is no difficulty presented to the religious man in 
development, so far as it relates to inanimate nature; he 
may believe in evolution as a mode of divine operation. 
Doubts and difficulties arise when he is required to assent 
to its universal application to every form of organized be¬ 
ing. But surely if it exists and is prevalent in dead matter 
without being atheistic it may also be allowed in plants 
and animals. 

It is admitted on all hands to have a place and power in 
the individual plant and animal, both of which proceed 
from the seed or germ, take a typical form, and have a 
normal time to live and produce an offspring. There is a 






18 


DEVELOPMENT IN INDIVIDUALS. 


sense in which the oak is in the acorn, the child is father 
of the man. Both grow partly by internal powers and 
arrangements, and partly by external nourishment and 
accretions from day to day, and from year to year. If 
any one regards this as taking place independent of God, 
he is so far an atheist. If he believes it to be accomplished 
by the power of God, he is thus far a true theist, and his 
heart may be filled with adoration and his mouth with 
praise. 

Not only is there development in the individual, but 
also in the succession of individuals. There is here a ro¬ 
tation, the egg from the living being developed into a 
new living being, producing a new egg. It is equally true 
that the bird is from the egg and the egg from the bird, 
and both by evolution. No one will speak against such 
an arrangement, as it provides children for the comfort of 
parents and parents to care for children. 

But disputes arise when development is carried farther. 
It is allowed that there is development in the individual, 
but may it also take place in the species ? In other words, 
can one species grow out of another ? To clear the ground 
for a fair discussion let us look at what is admitted. 

It is allowed, nay, maintained, that there is such a thing 
in nature as distinct species, genera, and orders. These, in 
ordinary circumstances, cannot be changed into each other. 
The lily cannot be transmuted into the rose, nor the sheep 
into the goat. In the common operations of nature every 
plant and animal is after its kind or species. Figs do not 
produce thistles, nor do thistles produce figs. 

It is also admitted by all that species develop varieties . 1 

1 Prof. Asa Gray writes: “The facts, so far as I can judge, do not 
support the assumption of every sided and indifferent variations. The 
variations do not tend in many directions; the variations seem to be 
an internal response to external impressions.” 















DEVELOPMENT IN SPECIES. 


19 


I believe there is no one tree—oak or pine, elm or birch— 
precisely the same in the old world and in the new. What 
a variety of pigeons are there, all descended, it is supposed, 
from the rock pigeon. These varieties are produced inter¬ 
nally, largely by external circumstances, that is, by the en¬ 
vironment. In a barren soil and a severe climate an oak 
will become dwarfed and its descendants will be the same. 
The dog can be trained to point at game, and a breed will 
be produced possessing this aptitude. It has to be added 
that these varieties tend to return, if the environment does 
not continue to prevent it, to the original type of the species. 
The cultivated plant, cast out of the garden, will be apt to 
go back to its wild state. It is usual also that when animals 
of different species have paired, the horse and the ass for 
instance, the offspring—the mule—is not prolific and dies 
out. 

We have approached the battlefield gradually, but now 
we are in the midst of the fight, and we may watch it, 
even though we do not take part with either side. Two 
grand questions are before us. One relates to the pro¬ 
duction of the species at the first. Were the species of 
amoeba, of molluscs, of insects, of fishes, of reptiles, of 
mammals (the consideration of man had best be deferred) 
created, very much as they now are, by the immediate fiat 
of God at the beginning, or as the ages rolled on ? Or were 
they evolved out of a previous material by internal laws 
of development and by constant increments from the en¬ 
vironment ? The second question is intimately connected 
with the first, In rare and extraordinary circumstances 
can new species come forth out of the old, as varieties do, 
and these go down by heredity ? 

The opinions of the ancients on such a subject are of no 
value, as they have no scientific basis. Many deep think¬ 
ers believed in spontaneous generation, and supposed that 







20 


DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. 


lower animated creatures came out of the sea or bubbled 
out of marshes, and they did not see anything irreligious 
in this, as they, or at least a number of them, believed it to 
be done by a divine power. In the earlier centuries of the 
modern era, naturalists were carefully observing the spe¬ 
cies, genera, and orders, with the view of classifying plants 
and animals, and they were fond of regarding kinds as 
fixed and immutable. Keligious people were inclined to 
regard all natural species as created by God, and this re¬ 
quired, when they came to believe in geological succession, 
a perpetual creation down to the period at which man 
appeared. Since the days of Mallet and Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire there has been an ever-increasing body of natural¬ 
ists inclined to account for the origin of species by natural 
law. 

Who is to settle these questions, or rather this question, 
for it is one ? This can be done only by long and varied 
observation and discussion. I certainly feel as to myself 
that I cannot decide it. The tendency of modern specula¬ 
tion has all been toward the prevalence of development by 
natural causation. Yet there are phenomena of which it 
may be said that they cannot at this present time be ex¬ 
plained by any natural process. But there is one point 
on which I am quite as much entitled to speak as any 
other is : Does religion require us to insist that species and 
orders in natural science are all fixed forever ? that in no 
circumstances can a new species be produced by natural law ? 

It is certainly conceivable that the God who created all 
things should also have created by a direct act, without a 
medium or without a process, the first member of every 
one of the hundred thousands of plants and animals on the 
earth, and then allowed, or, rather, enabled, them to go 
down by an evolutionary heredity. But it is quite as pos¬ 
sible and equally conceivable that God may have organized 


HOW PRODUCED. 


21 


tlie species out of the previously existing materials, even 
as lie made man’s body out of the dust of the ground. The 
essential elements of organisms are oxygen, nitrogen, hy¬ 
drogen, carbon, with sulphur and iron, and aqueous fluids. 
These are represented as being the least volatile of the 
elements and the most permanent in their combination, 
and because of these qualities they may have been brought 
and kept together in organisms. It is quite conceivable 
that out of the constituents of the universe God may have 
arranged that these should combine to form those aggre¬ 
gates which we call plants and animals, and as the ages 
run on, to form new species in rare and exceptional cir¬ 
cumstances. It has to be added that these elements will 
not of themselves form living beings without some in- 
lierent or superadded hereditary vital power, a subject 
which will have to be considered separately. JSTow, it is 
not for me to say beforehand which of these methods, 
immediate or mediate, God should adopt. The former 
of these might seem to bring in God more directly. It 
certainly makes him interfere more frequently with the 
works of nature; but then, when he is thus interfering, 
lie is interfering with his own works, which we may sup¬ 
pose to have been planned from the first in infinite wis¬ 
dom. If it be found in fact that he has chosen the latter 
method, we are just as much entitled in that case as in the 
other to discover the action of God, and we may without 
presumption discover evidences of beneficence. For God 
does thus secure not only a connection of his works with 
himself, but a connection of them one with another; and 
thus, on the one hand, there is a certain stability in natural 
classes, while, on the other hand, there is a sufficient 
amount of variety and progression to suit the organism to 
new positions and provide for the survival of the fittest, 
which is certainly a good provision. 









22 


THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT. 


A number of theories have been devised to account for 
the production of what seem to be new species. Darwin 
gives prominence to the principle of Natural Selection, 
with its accompaniment the Survival of the Fittest; but 
acknowledges in his later editions that he had attached 
too much importance to it. The phrase is not a very 
happy one, as it seems to imply choice, which certainly 
has no place in the process. But it points to a fact that 
the weakest plants and animals are most apt to die early 
and leave no progeny, whereas the strong live and have a 
more powerful offspring. I do not purpose to give all the 
theories, or to examine them critically. They differ chiefly 
in this, that some attach more importance to the operation 
of the internal elements, others to the external circum¬ 
stances or environment. Some hold that there is an action 
producing change, variety, and progression in the com¬ 
ponents and structure of the organism, in the germ or in 
its growth. Among those who thus look for the cause of 
the development in the organs themselves may be men¬ 
tioned Lyell, Mivart, and Professor Owen, in England; 
Professor Gray, and Professor Cope in America; and, in 
Germany, Braun, Gegenbaur, Iieer, Nageli, Virchow, 
etc . 1 Most of them seem to make the development pro¬ 
ceed by gradual steps, scarcely if at all observable; others 
through a metamorphosis of germs and heterogenetic 
leaps. Perhaps we may have to take with us both the 
internal and external causes, in some cases the one, and in 
some the other being the stronger. The development of 
the individual certainly involves both an inward power of 


1 We have an admirable work on The Theories of Darwin, by Ru¬ 
dolph Sehjnidj excellently translated by G. A. Zimmermann (Jansen, 
MlClurg & Co., Ghicagp). This work is at once philosophical and scien¬ 
tific, and being now so accessible, renders it unnecessary for me to state 
and criticize the theories of evolution 




THERE IS MORE THAN PHYSICAL ENERGY. 23 


growth, and also external support and nutriment; both 
are necessary to produce the full form, and the seed 
which propagates the species. There may be the same 
principle in the production, in rare circumstances possibly 
only in the early geological ages, of new species. It is 
conceivable that in the earlier times aggregates might not 
have been so fixed as to render germs and species absolute¬ 
ly unchangeable. They seem now to be so determined 
that the species of animals and plants are comparatively 
permanent. 

It is always to be remembered that in vegetable and in 
animal development there is more than mechanical en¬ 
ergy. Mr. Spencer can scarcely be said to have perceived 
this ; certainly he has not given it its due place and prom¬ 
inence. There is evidently a chemical power in exercise, 
and this cannot be said to have yet been resolved into 
mechanism. Then there is a power, which without de¬ 
fining it, was simply called vital by our older naturalists, 
and which, however it may have been produced, and 
whatever may be its nature, is in actual operation higher 
than either the mechanical or chemical. Even Darwin is 
obliged to bring in a panzoism to account for the genesis 
and continuance of organisms. Mr. Spencer himself has 
to use physiological units to explain heredity. What are 
these but particular exhibitions of the old vital forces ? 

Perhaps the most remarkable example of this physio¬ 
logical development's to be seen in the progress of the 
embryo in the womb, as discovered by Yon Baer. The 
germ is apparently (it cannot be so really) much the same 
in all animals except the lowest; but it becomes differen¬ 
tiated and takes the form of the polyps, the worms, the 
molluscs, and arthropods, and goes on to the fish, the 
amphibia, the reptiles, to birds and mammalia. Now thi9 
progression, as every one knows, is very much the same 








24 


WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. 


as that of the animal races in the geological ages. This 
does not imply, as I understand it, that the germ of the 
mammal, in its ascending process, ever does become a bird 
or a reptile. It means that there are combinations of 
agents in the germ and its surroundings, which proceed, 
that is, are developed after a certain manner, and that 
from a prearranged combination of matters and forces 
there has been a like or parallel progression in the whole 
animal kingdom. All this implies more than mere me¬ 
chanical energy or persistence of force. Powers are im¬ 
plied, which, in the present stage of science cannot be 
resolved into the mechanical. Yet in no human machine 
can we discover more clearly the evidence of a plan and 
purpose. With these new powers acting, there is now a 
higher manner and form of development, and we have 
one generation of intelligent and moral beings succeeding 
another. 


SECTION VI. 

WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. 

While it can do much, it may not be able to do every¬ 
thing. There is a tendency among eager and hasty thinkers 
to push every newly discovered truth to an extreme. I am 
as old as to remember the feeling kindled when Sir Hum¬ 
phry Davy made his brilliant discoveries as to electricity 
and chemical action. There were sciolists in our schools 
of popular science, book critics in our newspapers, and 
wandering lecturers who hastened to make electricity ac¬ 
count for everything, for even life and mind itself. This 
scientific fashion, never encouraged by the great discoverer 
himself, soon ran and ended its course, and died out in 



CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR ORIGIN. 


25 


the struggle for existence as other and equally powerful 
agents came into notice. Evolution is at present running 
a like course. The great scientific work of the past age 
has been to show what it can do ; that of the coining age 
is to lay a restraint upon its career, and to show what it 
cannot do. Like all creature action it will be found to 
have very stringent limitations. We may fix on some of 
these. 

I. It cannot give an account of the origination of 
things. This is implied in its nature and its very name. 
Development takes place among materials already existing. 
Evolution is the derivation of one thing from another 
thing. But the mind does seek after an origin. This 
has been maintained by Aristotle, and by the profound 
thinkers of all ages. The principle of causation insists on 
going back from effect to cause, and from one cause to an¬ 
other, and is not satisfied till it rests in an originating sub¬ 
stance possessed of the power to produce all that follows. 
Evolution implies a set of acting substances. So far from 
accounting for these, say body with its attractions and af¬ 
finities, and mind with its thoughts and feelings, it pre¬ 
supposes that these exist and that they are acting. The 
mind seems to demand an account of these; development 
cannot furnish this, and has to call in a creator and organ¬ 
izer. Evolution simply shows a flowing and widening 
stream, implying a fountain, which, however, it conceals in 
mist. 

II. It does not originate the power which works in de¬ 
velopment. That process shows us objects acting causally, 
but takes and gives no account either of the objects or the 
forces in them. To account for them, Herbert Spencer 
calls in what he denominates the Persistence of Force—a 
phrase to which some object. But call it what you please, 
force or power or energy, or the persistence of force, or 









26 WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO. 

the conservation of energy, there is certainly such a thing, 
not imaginary or hypothetical but real. Spencer thereby 
accounts for all the action of nature. But he is philoso¬ 
pher enough to know that this implies something behind, 
beneath, or above it. He is obliged to do this by the 
nature and necessity of thought. He is constrained to 
believe this because it is impossible to conceive the oppo¬ 
site, which, according to him, is the ultimate test and 
criterion of truth. I am not disposed to put the argument 
in this form, but I join him in holding that v T e are neces¬ 
sitated to believe that there is a something beyond the 
matter and force which we notice. With him this is un¬ 
known and unknowable, and he kindly and condescendingly 
makes this the sphere of religion. Yet he himself is obliged 
to acknowledge that he knows something about it. Indeed 
it is impossible for him or any one to speak about it, to 
make any predication of it, unless he so far knows it. He 
knows it to be a power and to have power; and surely this 
is knowledge, and rather important knowledge. He every¬ 
where speaks of a necessary “ belief in a power of wdiich no 
limit in time or space can be conceived.” This limitless¬ 
ness is surely a farther knowledge. He can tell a great deal 
about its working by differentiation and integration, pro¬ 
ducing happiness and virtue, causing an advance, and fin¬ 
ally dissolving all things in a universal conflagration. 
Such a thing is not absolutely unknown. I agree with 
him in thinking that there is, that there must be, such a 
power. But on the same ground as he argues that it ex¬ 
ists and is a power, I argue that we know it to be not only 
a power but a wise power, a benevolent, a righteous power. 
But evolution has not produced this power, it is the pro¬ 
duction of it. 

III. Evolution of itself cannot give us the beneficent 
laws and special ends we see in nature. There is in force, 




CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR ORDER. 


27 


considered in itself, neither good nor evil. It is as ready 
to work destruction as to promote the spread of happiness. 
The persistence of force might be a persistence in evil. 
The separate agencies being blind might as readily produce 
confusion as order. A railway train, without a head or 
hand to put it on the right track, might only work havoc. 
In order to operate beneficently the persisting never-dying 
force must have collocations, as Chalmers calls them, 
adaptations or adjustments, as I call them, to enable them 
to accomplish the good ends which are so visible. 

These are of two kinds. One is a general order, or 
what are called laws of nature, such as the seasons and the 
periods of animal life. I am inclined to see purposes in the 
very forms of animals and plants, and the manner in which 
they grow into their type, while the type ever advances 
as if to realize an idea. I discover an end in the manner 
in which plants and animals are produced. Two arrange¬ 
ments are necessary to effect this. First, there is the ten¬ 
dency of every living thing to produce a seed or germ. 
The powers necessary to accomplish this are very numer¬ 
ous and very complex, but all conspiring toward this one 
end, as if it w^ere one of the purposes for which the plant 
was created. Secondly, there is the growth of the plant or 
animal from its embryo. This, too, implies an immense 
combination of arranged elements and forces. It looks 
excessively like an end contemplated, an idea to be real¬ 
ized. It looks all the more like this when we notice that 
the seed or germ is after its kind, and produces a new life 
of the same type. 

I have endeavored to show in another work that in our 
world there is not only law and general government, but a 
particular providence accomplishing special ends. 1 The 


1 Method of Divine Government, Part II. 






28 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. 


laws produce general results, but they are also made to 
conspire and concur and cross each other, so as to produce 
individual events, which, as far as we know, follow no gen¬ 
eral law. This is manifest in every part of God's govern¬ 
ment, but is specially seen in God’s dealings toward his 
intelligent and sensitive creatures. “ A sparrow cannot 
fall to the ground without him.” Thoughtful minds have 
ever felt comforted by the thought that there is a God 
watching over them, and ordering their lot from beginning 
to end, sending health or disease at the proper season, 
gratifying their wishes or thwarting them, according as may 
be for their best good. All this may be done by the per¬ 
sistence of force, but it is by a force guided by intelli¬ 
gence and love. When man accomplishes any end, it is by 
working on materials already prepared for him. But the 
God who created the materials has also arranged them for 
the accomplishment of his purposes. There is need of a 
power above evolution to account for the beneficence of 
evolution. 


SECTION VII. 

NEW TOWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. 

I have shown that in physical causation there is merely 
a changed state of the bodies acting as the causes. A and 
B act upon each other and constitute a cause, the effect 
being simply A! and B' in a new state with no new bodies, 
and no added energy, the energy in the two A and B 
being the same as in A' B', with a portion in the one 
transferred to the other. In all such causation there is no 
energy in the effect which w y as not in the cause. If there 
be a new power appearing it must be superadded. But 
new powers have appeared. 



REVEALED BY GEOLOGY. 


2d 


For the purposes of my exposition, it is not necessary 
that I should determine what are the original bodies or 
powers in our world, what is their nature, and how many 
they are. They may be atoms, simple and indivisible, 
they may be molecules consisting of two or more atoms in 
union. These no doubt have all their powers by which 
they act. 

Geology clearly reveals that new products have appeared. 
There was a time when there was no organism and no life, 
no plant or animal. But at a set time organized matter 
appeared, say protoplasm. When there was no animated 
being I believe that there was no sensation, pleasant or 
painful, and it certainly cannot be proven that there was 
any feeling in the protoplasm or in the plant. As ages 
roll on we have creatures evidently feeling pleasure and 
liable to pain. Organisms both in the vegetable and ani¬ 
mal form rise higher and higher, and animals become 
possessed of impulses which prompt them to act in a cer¬ 
tain way. We have now powers higher than the mechan¬ 
ical, we have the vital, the sensitive, and the beginning of 
the psychical. Hackel divides the organic world into 
three kingdoms—the protista, the vegetable, and the ani¬ 
mal. He traces twenty-two stages in the rise from the 
protista on to man, eight of them belonging to the inver¬ 
tebrate and fourteen to the vertebrates. I am not dis¬ 
posed to sanction this pedigree and every stage of it. But 
it is clear that there is such an advance. In the animal 
kingdom there is first sensation, then instinctive impulse, 
then lower rising to higher forms of intelligence, distin¬ 
guishing things that differ, conducting long processes of 
reasoning and induction, and giving us glimpses of spirit¬ 
ual and eternal truth. Finally, we have a moral nature 
discerning between good and evil, laying obligations upon 
us to promote the happiness, and as higher, the moral 







30 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. 


good of man, and pointing to a judgment-day. Natural¬ 
ists may be tempted to overlook these last, the high ideas 
of which we are conscious; but these are realities, are 
facts revealed to the inner sense quite as clearly and as 
certainly as the visible and tangible molecular and molar 
parts, the seed, the limbs, the joints, the nerves and brain, 
revealed to the external senses. 

Was there Life in the original atom, or molecule formed 
of the atoms ? If not, how did it come in when the first 
plant appeared ? Was there sensation in the original mole¬ 
cule ? If not, what brought it in when the first animal 
had a feeling of pleasure or of pain? Was there mind in 
the first molecule, say a power of perceiving an object out 
of itself ? Was there consciousness in the first molecule or 
monad—a consciousness of self ? Was there a power of 
comparing or judging, of discerning things, of noting their 
agreements or differences ? Had it a power of reason¬ 
ing, of inferring the unseen from the seen, of the future 
from the past ? Were there emotions in these first exist¬ 
ences? say a hope of continued life or a fear of approach¬ 
ing death ? Perhaps they had loving attachments to each 
other, perhaps they had some morality, say a sense of 
justice in keeping their own whirl, and allowing to others 
their rights and their place in this dance ! Had they will 
at the beginning, and a power of choosing between pleasure 
and pain, between the evil and the good ? Perhaps they 
had some piety, and paid worship of the silent sort to 
God! 

It is needless to say that there is not even the semblance 
of a proof of there being any such capacities in the original 
atoms or force-centres. If so, how did they come in? 
Take one human capacity: how did consciousness come 
in? Herbert Spencer, the mightiest of them, would have 
us believe that he has answered the question, and yet he 


SENSATION. 


31 


has simply avoided it. In his “ Psychology ” 1 he is speak¬ 
ing of nerves for hundreds of pages; he shows that in 
their development there is a succession of a certain kind ; 
and adds simply that “ there must arise a consciousness ” / 
This is all he condescends to say, bringing in no cause or 
link or connection. Thus does he slip over the gap—a 
practice not uncommon with this bold speculator. 

It is pertinent to ask, Ilow did these things come in ? 
IIow did things without sensation come to have sensation ? 
things without instinct to have instinct ? creatures without 
memory to have memory ? beings without intelligence to 
have intelligence ? mere sentient existence to know the 
distinction between good and evil ? I am sure that when 
these things appear, there is something not previously in 
the atom or molecule. All sober thinkers of the day ad¬ 
mit that there is no evidence whatever in experience or in 
reason to show that matter can produce mind; that me¬ 
chanical action can gender mental action; that chemical 
action can manufacture consciousness ; that electric action 
can reason, or organic structure rise to the idea of the good 
and the holy. I argue according to reason and experi¬ 
ence that we must call in a power above the original physical 
forces to produce such phenomena. I may admit that a body 
may come out of another body by the powers with which 
the bodies are endowed ; but I say that a sensitive, intelli¬ 
gent, moral discerning soul cannot proceed from the ele¬ 
ments of matter. Hew powers have undoubtedly come in 
when consciousness and understanding and will begin to 
act. They may come according to laws not yet discovered, 
but they are the laws of the Supreme Lawgiver. 

It will be argued by some that there must have been all 
along in the atoms a latent life, sensation, consciousness, 


Psychology, Vol. I., Sec. 179. 








32 


NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. 


and mind, with beneficence and capacity of choice, ready 
to be developed in the aeons, some in thousands and some 
in millions of years. Those who deny that any new pow¬ 
ers have appeared must resort to some such supposition. 
It may be allowed that this is a thing imaginable and pos¬ 
sible, but there is not the semblance of a proof in its favor. 
Certainly there is no evidence that sentient beings could 
have passed through the intolerable heat of the star-dust 
from which our former worlds are supposed to have come. 
Even if we should discover proof of this, we should, in the 
very fact, have proof of design in the way in which these 
latent powers have come forth at the appropriate times, 
and continued ever afterward to operate in organized 
plants, in sentient animals, and in intelligent man. We 
have to choose our horn. If all the endowments now in 
our world were in primary molecules ready to come forth 
at the fit time, it is clear that they must have been the 
creature of an intelligence of inconceivable power. If 
they were not there, it is necessary to call in a subsequent 
creation, or at least some forthputting of Omnipotence. 

Another supposition may be resorted to, somewhat more 
plausible, but still without any positive evidence. In 
water there are properties which do not appear in the ele¬ 
ments oxygen and hydrogen. In organized matter there 
are powers which cannot be discovered in the components. 
It may be argued that in like manner at the appearances 
of new products there were conjunctions which produced 
life and feeling, consciousness and memory, intelligence 
and love. It may be safely said that proof is as much 
wanting here as in the other supposition. A necessity of 
thought founded on experience does indeed imply that 
there must be some extraordinary power called in to ac¬ 
count for the extraordinary result which is beyond the 
potency of the common mundane agencies. But what this 









THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 


33 


power is we have really no means of knowing. It is cer¬ 
tain that the power which has provided intelligence and 
conscience cannot be the ordinary mechanical or the chemi¬ 
cal, or even the vital powers. These new powers imply, if 
not a creation, at least a providence. 

The objects we are now looking at lie on the horizon 
of our vision and appear dim. We are constrained to call 
in a power to produce the effects, but whether it is to be 
regarded as natural or supernatural, we may not be able to 
say. God is working, but whether without or with sec¬ 
ondary instrumentality we cannot determine. We may 
have come to a region where the difference between nat¬ 
ural and supernatural disappears. We may have remarked 
that the Scriptures never mention such a distinction ; they 
ascribe all to the will of God. The distinction may have 
an importance only in this lower and mundane sphere where 
we have worlds, but no experience of the creation of 
worlds. Faith and science may both be satisfied with our 
ascribing the whole process to a Divine Power, without 
dogmatizing as to how it has been acting. 

Have we not, after all, the most satisfactory account of 
the process in the opening of our Scriptures ? There is 
certainly a wonderful correspondence or parallelism be¬ 
tween Genesis and geology, between the written record 
and the record in stone. We are to be on our guard in¬ 
deed against straining either one or other to bring them 
into accordance. The general agreement of the two is as 
obvious as it is wonderful. The only difference is that the 
one record is sensible, while the other is scientific. The 
one is the account of the scene as it would have appeared 
to a spectator then living; the other is the conclusion 
drawn from careful exploration. 

That there is an accordance between the Scriptures and 
science has been shown by the three men on this continent 














34 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES. 


who are most entitled to speak on the scientific question: 
Professor Dana, of Yale; Professor Dawson, of Montreal; 
and Dr. Guyot, of Princeton. Both testimonies give the 
same general account of the progression and of the order 
in which the powers appear. “ Howbeit that was not first 
which is spiritual ( 7 wev/ianKov), but that which is natural 
{^rv^ucov), and afterward that which is spiritual.” “And so 
it is written the first man was made a living soul; the 
second Adam was made a quickening spirit ” (1 Cor. xv. 44- 
46), where we may mark the advancement from the merely 
living soul v £ cocav ) to the quickening spirit (7 rvevfia 

ooitolovv ). 

More particularly the book of Genesis represents the 
work as proceeding by days, which in every part of Scrip¬ 
ture is employed to denote epochs ; thus in chap. ii. 4, it is 
said, “ In the day that the Lord God made the earth and 
the heavens.” Regarding the days as epochs, there is a 
very remarkable parallelism between the order in Genesis 
and the order in geology, quite as much so as that between 
the stages in embryology and that in paleontology pointed 
out by Yon Baer. 1 In the beginning or origin ( iv ap^f)) 
God created the heavens and the earth, and gave the original 
constituents their potencies which began to act. The earth 
was at first without form and void, with only the materials, 
or star dust, as Laplace’s theory requires, the homogeneous 
state of Spencer. When the differentiation or evolution 
began there was in the first day light, as we might expect. 
In the second day came the expanse, that is, the sinking 


1 Mr. G. Romanes declares “that tlie order in which the flora and 
fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth 
corresponds with that which the theory of evolution requires and the 
evidence of geology proves ” (Nature, August, 1881). Elsewhere he re¬ 
fers this to “traditional history.” But there can be no traditional his¬ 
tory of the production of plants and animals. 




THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 


35 


of the more solid materials and the elevation of the more 
ethereal. On the third day there was the separation of land 
and water, and plants were produced. On the fourth day the 
sun and moon appeared as distinct bodies, in accordance 
with the theory of Laplace. On the fifth day animals are 
brought forth—the lower creatures, tannim or swarmers, 
then fishes and fowls. On the sixth day the higher animals, 
reptiles and cattle, and as the crown of the whole, man, 
with qualities higher than all the other creatures, making 
him like unto God. 

There are two accounts of the creation of man. One is 
in Genesis, chap. i. 26. There is council and decision : “ Let 
us make man in our image.” This applies to his soul or 
higher nature. The other account is in chap. ii. 7 : “ And 
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man be¬ 
came a living soul.” This is man’s organic body. We have 
a supplement to this, Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16 : “ My sub¬ 
stance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, 
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 
Thine eyes did see my substance, being yet unperfect; and 
in thy book all my members were written, which in con¬ 
tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of 
them.” This passage used to be quoted by Agassiz. This 
is my creed as to man’s bodily organism. I so far under¬ 
stand what is said. Man is made of the earth. There is 
a curious preparatory process hinted at; a process and a 
progression going on I know not how long, and all is the 
work of God, and written in God’s book. I understand 
this, and yet I do not understand it. Socrates said of the 
philosophy of Heraclitus that what he understood was so 
good that he was sure the rest would also be good if he 
understood it. So I say of this passage. I so far under¬ 
stand itj and get glorious glimpses of a divinely ordained 





36 THE NEW POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD. 


process, and yet I do not understand it, for it carries me 
into the secret things which belong unto the Lord our God. 
I affirm with confidence that there is not, in geological or 
biological science, any truth even apparently inconsistent 
with his statement. 

I cannot say how man’s body was formed. But the 
Scriptures evidently speak truly when they declare that 
it was formed out of previously existing materials—out 
of the dust of the ground. They also declare that God 
“ breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he be¬ 
came a living soul.” As to his higher nature, it is said 
that he was made after the image of God. This must 
mean in knowledge of truth and in holiness. lie cannot 
know all truth, but he knows of certain propositions, scien¬ 
tific and practical, that they are and must be true. lie 
knows and appreciates the good and distinguishes between 
good and evil. This he does by the conscience, an essen¬ 
tial part of his nature, represented by the tree of knowl¬ 
edge of good and evil. Both these qualities raise him 
high above the brutes, who have some discernment of 
things that differ, and a fear of pain and punishment, but 
have no idea of necessary truth or of the beauty of moral 
excellence. In all this there is a new power not produced 
by mechanical or animal agency. 


section vnx 

THE NEW POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD. 

We have seen that in the ages new powers are intro¬ 
duced—powers of life, feeling, and intelligence—whether 
by natural or supernatural causes we may not be able to 
determine, because the operation takes place in a region 




INTERACTION OF POWERS. 


37 


where it is difficult to say wTiat is creative and what is 
creature action ; what is done by instruments and what 
without instruments—like the original creation out of 
nothing. When these new powers come they act upon, 
and they act with, the previously existing powers. The 
seed of the plant falls into the soil already formed, and 
works in it and with it. The sentient power; when ani¬ 
mals appear, acts along with the mechanical energy in the 
bodily frame. It is the same when higher intelligence is 
introduced into animalism. The senses still work and 
supply information, which is received and formed into 
shape by the intellect. When the moral power begins to 
act it does not supersede the understanding, which tells us 
what things are, and upon this representation the conscience 
proceeds. These superadded powers seem to me to be all 
very much of the nature of seeds. They continue, and 
there is reciprocal action between them and their environ¬ 
ment. They have life in them and they germinate and 
grow, influencing their surroundings ; and being swayed 
by them we have joint results which could not have been 
produced by either agent, and a development with vastly 
more varied potencies and of a more marked character, 
the new powers mixing with the old in the offspring, as 
they do in the parents. When the plant appears there is 
an interaction of the organic and inorganic powers, and we 
have development, in which both are combined, the growth 
of the plant and in due time its decay and dissolution, but 
with a seed left behind. When animals with sensation 
and will come forth we have now a more complex aggre¬ 
gate, still terminating in death, but with a new life in the 
offspring. The organic as the higher uses the inorganic 
powers and turns them to its own uses. When mind in¬ 
terposes it acts harmoniously with matter, and the soul 
and body act and interact, only the mind as the higher 







38 THE NEW POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD. 


subordinates tlie other. There is like joint and reciprocal 
agency as the mental powers rise higher and higher. The 
memory proceeds on the information given by the senses, 
and the understanding with its judgments and reasonings, 
and the conscience with its moral discernment and senti¬ 
ments, presuppose and proceed upon both the senses and 
memory. The development now goes on under the new 
powers, but using all the old powders, and therefore with 
accumulated momentum. What is gained by any species 
goes down to the generation following. 1 

As one of the issues the operations of nature are apt to 
go on in epochs, eras, or cycles. The organized causations 
pass through time like stage-coaches or omnibuses, which 
take in and give out passengers on to their journey’s end. 
Thus, in animal life we have infancy, childhood, mature 
age, declining life, old age, and death. We have epochs in 
history, times in which there is a strong disposition to 
emigrate and form colonies, as when the Greeks, in the 
sixth century before Christ, spread themselves over many 
countries. We have seasons when the cry is for w T ar among 
large bodies of people, ending perhaps in a demand for 
peace when the evils of war have been felt, and this 
continuing till it is needful to defend rights which are being 
trampled on. We have fashions not only in dress and 
in modes of social life, but in literature—the Byronic pe- 


1 Prof. Cope lias remarked (American Naturalist, April, 1880) that the 
psychical powers modify and strengthen development. “In living 
things the powers display design, having direct reference to conscious¬ 
ness, to the satisfaction of pleasure and the avoidance of pains. Mind 
also controls structure : the evolution of mind has a corresponding effect 
on organism, a view which is confirmed by palaeontology. The mind 
producing struggles of animals has led to machines for grinding, cut¬ 
ting, seizing, digging; for running, swimming, and flying. Man being de¬ 
fective as to these instruments, has been compelled to exercise caution 
and reflection, and has become restricted to peculiar modes of life.” 




SPIRITUAL POWERS. 


39 


riod or the Dickens period ; and in art—the Raphaelites 
and pre-Kaphaelites; in all of which, be it observed, there 
is a prevailing taste which continues for years. You 
could often tell at what age a book was written or an edi¬ 
fice built simply by inspecting its style and expression. 

While there is an occasional degradation by reason of 
the want of fitting in the environment to the new life, 
there is upon the whole a progression. This arises mainly 
from the continuance of the new and higher powers in¬ 
troduced—say life, or intelligence, or conscience. These 
abide and go down by heredity, and as they act draw in, 
influence, and use the surroundings to produce new or 
higher aggregates. There results an advance upon the 
whole in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, in the soil, 
and it may be the climate. The progression is especially 
seen in man, with his intelligence and moral nature, which 
in spite of errors and sins, leads on to the employment for 
ends of many and varied powers, and these of a higher 
order. These ends are specially secured by the founding 
of hospitals for the diseased and the weak, and, above all, 
by the founding of schools and colleges for the cultivation 
and refining of man’s higher nature ; and the improve¬ 
ments go down by heredity from one age to another, when 
they raise up still nobler products. 


SECTION IX. 

SPIRITUAL POWERS. 

We have seen that there is an advance in the powers 
working in our world from the inanimate on to the or¬ 
ganic, the sentient, the instinctive, the conscious, the 
intelligent, and the moral. I have sometimes thought that 




40 


SPIRITUAL POWERS. 


in nature itself I can discover anticipations (I would al¬ 
most call them predictions) of something higher to come. 
Agassiz was fond of finding prophecies of man’s noble form 
in the frames of the lower animals, hie erred, so I think, 
in not allowing sufficient influence to development. Pro¬ 
fessor Owen, too, was disposed to believe that the forms 
of the lower creatures pointed on to man as the archetype. 
Some of the views of these great thinkers as well as 
great comparative anatomists, may be somewhat anti¬ 
quated, or at least reckoned so by our extreme evolution¬ 
ists. But evolution, properly understood, does not even 
tend to set aside those ideals which our greatest natural¬ 
ists have seen, and been elevated as they looked on them. 
But it may be doubted whether the natural man, the mere 
animal man, is the true ideal; say the selfish man, the 
lustful man, the deceitful man, the vindictive man. Every 
man is in a sense a moral man; he is possessed of a con¬ 
science discerning between good and evil, “ accusing or 
else excusino;.” But our moral nature denounces much 
that we do, and claims to do so in the name and by the 
authority of God. Under this God we look for a rectifi¬ 
cation. This cannot be had in the conscience, which only 
condemns. Our moral nature points to a law of love, but 
shows no way of reaching it. In these circumstances we 
should not be indisposed to look round and inquire 
whether God, in following out his plan, may not super¬ 
add, as he has ever been superadding—some remedial 
measure, by which his own Idea (using the phrase in the 
Platonic sense) may be accomplished and realized. 

The Scriptures announce clearly and emphatically that 
there has been an interposition and addition, and this not 
inconsistent with the original plan, but rather carrying it 
out. There is a new dispensation going beyond the old 
and animal ones, beyond even the intellectual and the 



THE NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 


41 


moral into the spiritual. God, who created man in his 
own image, has a means of restoring that image when it 
was lost. We are privileged to live under the dispensa¬ 
tion of the Spirit. There were anticipations of his work 
under the Old Testament, in his working on individuals 
to convert and sanctify them. Still such operations were 
only partial and anticipatory. “ For the Holy Ghost was 
not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” Hut Jesus 
when on earth spake of the Spirit, which they that be¬ 
lieve on him should receive. When he had finished his 
work of atonement for sin, and was taken up into heaven, 
the disciples waited for the accomplishment of the prom¬ 
ise, which was fulfilled when the day of Pentecost was fully 
come, and the Spirit was poured out from on high. This 
Power continues to work in the church, and will extend 
its influence till the Spirit of the Lord is poured on all 
flesh. 

Development now goes on under two potencies, the 
natural and the spiritual. There are the old powers still 
working—those of sense and understanding, of reason and 
of conscience. These constitute the life which God breathed 
into man when he became a living soul. They compose 
the higher reason made after the likeness of God, which 
sin has defaced, but which is deep down in our nature be¬ 
neath the incrustations covering it from the sight, but 
which is capable of being restored. Upon these the new 
and spiritual powers work. Much that takes place is the 
joint result of the two. The inspiration of Moses, of the 
prophets and apostles, did not destroy their natural char¬ 
acter, it only sanctified and elevated them. The spirits of 
the prophets were subject unto them. Religion does not 
eradicate the natural powers, it moulds and directs them 
to higher ends. The man’s faculties and his temperament 
are not changed by his becoming pious; if he was lively 




42 


SPIRITUAL POWERS. 


before lie will be lively still, if lie was dull and solid lie 
will continue so. 

It should be noticed, however, that as the new powers 
come in there may be opposition offered by the old powers, 
and a contest ensues. Science tells us that in the animal 
ages there was “ a struggle for existence and the survival 
of the fittest.” There is a like struggle in the human 
period between the evil and the good. Some of our old the¬ 
ologians held that death was introduced among the lower 
animals by the sin of Adam. There is no such statement 
in the Scriptures, and geology shows that death has reigned 
all along in the animal kingdom. But there is a unity in 
our world in this respect as in others, that there has been 
a contest in all ages. In this world the seed of the ser¬ 
pent contends with the seed of the woman, and in the 
heart “ the fiesli lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit 
against the flesh.” “ The whole creation groaneth and 
travailetli together until now,” but in the hope that the 
higher will conquer the lower, and that “ the creation 
itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption 
into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Bom. 
viii. 19). 

The development goes on in eras or epochs like the ages 
of geology, like the days of Genesis. The patriarchal dis¬ 
pensation grows out of the antediluvian, the Jewish out 
of the patriarchal, the Christian out of the Jewish. We 
may discover marked epochs even in the Christian church : 
the time of the fathers—a time of establishing ; the med¬ 
iaeval church—preserving like the winter the seeds depos¬ 
ited ; the Reformation—bursting forth like the spring; the 
denominational churches—discussing doctrines and settling 
creeds ; the missionary churches—carrying the truth to all 
lands, and about to expand into the millennial church. 

Upon the whole, there is progression in the spiritual as 









JOINED WITH THE NATURAL. 


43 


in tlie natural kingdom. Indeed many interesting corre¬ 
spondences may be traced between the two kingdoms. In 
both there are old powers and new working together and 
leading on to higher and higher products. The kingdom 
of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid 
in three measures of meal, and which ferments there till 
the whole is leavened. It is a seed becoming a plant; 
there is first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn 
in the ear. 

There is a development in the revelation of truth. First 
there is the shadow and then the substance, there are first 
types and then the archetype. There are promises and 
then performances, predictions and then fulfilments. We 
know little of antediluvian times, but evidently there was 
then a light like that of the dawn. There were prefigur¬ 
ations in the Levitical institutions made after the pattern 
shown in the mount. There is higher ethical teaching in 
the New Testament than in the Old. The discourses of 
our Lord, who is the light of the world, shed a brighter 
light than had shone before, Greek or Jewish. There is 
the fullest revelation of doctrinal truth in the Epistles of 
Paul, of Peter, and of John. 

We may discover this conjunction of powers in the writ¬ 
ing of the Scriptures. Moses speaks, and David speaks, 
and Isaiah speaks, and Paul speaks, and John speaks; and 
we discover the natural temperament of each, and the in¬ 
fluence of the age and circumstances in which they lived. 
But God too speaks: “ Thus saith the Lord.” All this is 
in analogy with God’s mode of procedure. The “ higher 
criticism,” as it is called, may look at and search and even 
find fault wfith the human element, but let it beware of 
meddling with the Divine element. If it does so it will 
be seen in the end only to show its weakness and fallibility, 
by, it may be, casting out, though the critic may not see it, 


> 

> 


> ) 
> ) 








44 


SPIRITUAL POWERS. 


something fitted to accomplish a good end. “All Scrip¬ 
ture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for 
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thor¬ 
oughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. iii. 16). 

Under this double influence the Christian grows. lie 
“ adds to his faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to 
knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and 
to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; 
and to brotherly kindness charity.” Xot that he is every 
instant advancing, but he is, upon the whole, progressing. 
He may have his periods of declension, but he rises above 
them. He is like a man ascending a high mountain; as he 
mounts up he may have to cross valleys deep and dark, 
but, upon the whole, he is rising higher and higher. The 
Christian dies like Samson, amid the glories of his strength, 
and slays in his death the last of his spiritual enemies. 
The church, too, extends. It is ever spreading into new 
countries, and it gives evidence that it will at last subdue 
all lands. Wherever it goes it carries with it innumerable 
blessings, in the lessening of human suffering, in improved 
legislation, in the promotion of education—lower and 
higher—and generally in the elevation of the race in 
knowledge and character. 

Here it is interesting to notice the unity of the devel¬ 
oped and developing history of our world. It does not 
take at first the form of a perfected world, but of a world 
going on toward perfection. It is not optimist, as Leibnitz 
painted it, but it is to become optimist. It has evil in it; 
but it is not pessimist, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann 
represent it, going to the other extreme. As it is now 
going on it is a scene of contests, with defeats and victor¬ 
ies through all its past history. It is a scene of contest 
from the beginning, of warring elements, of creatures suf- 


> c f 


t ( 











ACCESS TO GOD. 


45 


feringwho had not sinned “ after the similitude of Adam’s 
transgression.” There is in it at this moment a contest 
between the evil and the good, like that between winter 
and spring, in which the spring, led on by the sun in the 
heavens, shall certainly prevail. 

It is the most blessed of our privileges in this dispensa¬ 
tion that every one who believes has access to God. There 
is a sense, indeed, in which God makes himself known to 
all his intelligent creatures, and “ lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world.” He does so in his ordinary provi¬ 
dence, in which he brings events to pass according to causes 
which he has instituted, and in which he acts quite as cer¬ 
tainly as if he produced everything without subordinate 
agency. But earnest minds have never been satisfied with 
such distant views of God as are given by causation and 
consequent evolution. They aspire after and long for im¬ 
mediate intercourse with God. They pray in the belief 
that there is one to hear them, and they expect an answer. 
They will not allow themselves or others to think that God 
has so shut himself out from his own frorld that he cannot 
act in it and on it. They deny that our petitions are so 
bound to the earth by gravity that they cannot mount 
upward and reach the ear and the heart of our Heavenly 
Father who is felt as pitying them. They believe that 
their spirits can hold communion with God, who is a spirit, 
quite as certainly as our earth can act on the sun, and the 
sun on the earth. They have faith that there are wider 
and closer unions than the attraction of matter to matter. 
They are sure that all holy intelligences throughout the 
universe are in union with the holy God. Sure as we speak 
to God in faith God hears us. lie speaks if we will but 
hear. “ Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with 
his Son Jesus Christ.” 

From this double power, natural and spiritual, arises the 




46 


SPIRITUAL POWERS. 


difference in Christian experience and character. People 
have different natural inclinations, and are beset by differ¬ 
ent sins and temptations, and he suits his manifestation to 
their diversities. No Christian should insist that the work 
of God should be the same in the heart of every other as 
in his own. Nor should any one doubt of the reality of a 
spiritual work in himself because his experience is not the 
same as that of some others of whom he has read, or who 
may have opened up their feelings to him. Just as there 
is a diversity in the works of nature, in the color and form 
of plants and animals peopling the earth and ocean ; just as 
there is a variety in the shape and countenance of the bod¬ 
ily frames of men ; just as one star differeth from another, 
so Christians, while after one model, are made to take differ¬ 
ent types and hues of beauty on earth, and shall thus with 
their individualities be transplanted into heaven to adorn 
the paradise of God, and shine as stars in the firmament in 
heaven. In heaven the foundations of the wall of the city 
are garnished with all manner of. precious stones, and the 
tree of life in the midst of the garden bears “ twelve man¬ 
ner of fruits,” so the saints will there have each his own 
character; and the song which ascends will be a concert of 
diverse voices, each melodious, but each in its diversity join¬ 
ing with the others to make the harmony. Each in his 
own way will join in singing “ the song of Moses and the 
Lamb.” 





SECTION X. 


OVERSIGHTS IN SPENCER’S EVOLUTION. 

It is of no use denying in our day tlie doctrine of evo¬ 
lution in tlie name of religion, or any other good cause. 
An age or two ago many religious people were afraid of 
geology. It can now be shown that it rather favors religion 
by its furnishing proofs of design, and by the wonderful 
parallelism between Genesis and geology. The time is at 
hand when all intelligent people, religious and irreligious, 
will perceive that there is nothing impious in development 
considered in itself ; though it may be carried to excess 
and turned to atheistic purposes. The business of inquirers 
now is to explain its nature. This is what I have endeavored 
to do, to the best of my ability, in this little work. In 
doing this I have given an account different from that of 
Herbert Spencer. My work is a small one compared with 
his elaborate volumes. I do not purpose at the close of 
it to review his theory. In another number of this Series I 
propose examining his philosophy as culminated in his 
Ethics. 1 am here merely to show that I have set forth 
some truths not noticed by that powerful speculator, who 
is as remarkable for what he has overlooked as for what 
he has looked at. I think I have helped somewhat to clear 
up the subject by representing evolution as an organized 
causation. This requires us always to look for an adequate 
cause of the new product attributed to evolution. Mr. 
Spencer, and his follower Mr. Fiske, refer the whole to 
the Persistence of Force, as if there were only one power, 
and this apparently only mechanical or biological. But 





48 


OVERSIGHTS IN SPENCER’S EVOLUTION. 


there are other powers, or at least manifestations of power, 
of which we have as distinct evidence as we have of these. 
In particular there is a mental power, of which we are con¬ 
scious, but at the peculiarities of which he has never looked, 
and which cannot be produced by any persistence of his 
forces. 

It was charged against Locke by Liebnitz, and repeated 
by Cousin, that in constructing his theory—that all our 
ideas are derived from sensation and reflection—he did not 
begin with a careful introspection of the ideas themselves, 
and that, in fact, he overlooked the peculiarities of some of 
our most important ideas, such as infinity and moral good. 
A like charge may be brought against Spencer. As might 
be expected of one trained as an engineer, he is well ac¬ 
quainted with mechanical power, and has acquired a large 
knowledge of biology, some of his theories in which, how¬ 
ever, as, for instance, his development of nervous forces, 
are not acknowledged by our highest authorities. But he 
seems to me to have never looked patiently, by the inner 
sense, at purely mental acts, such as consciousness, cogni¬ 
tion, moral discernment, and will. “ I believe that the ex¬ 
periences of utility, organized and consolidated through all 
past generations of the human race, have been producing 
corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued 
transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain 
faculties of moral intuition.” Our moral intuitions are 
thus nervous modifications become hereditary. 

He speaks often, as even the materialist does, of psychical 
acts. He thinks he has accounted for them by evolution. 
He has done so, simply overlooking their distinctive qual¬ 
ities as revealed by consciousness. He tries to evolve the 
conscious from the unconscious, thought from that which 
has no thought, and the moral from that which has no 
morality. He has thus in the effect what is not in the 




OVERLOOKS MENTAL ACTS. 


49 


cause. If we scrutinize his theory carefully, we shall find 
that what he accounts for is not properly psychical or men¬ 
tal operation, is not the consciousness of self, is not the 
feeling, the emotion, the reasoning, the resolution, the sen¬ 
timent disclosed to the internal sense. The mind being 
merely an aggregate of nerves (he seems incapable of con¬ 
ceiving it as anything else) he can so far account for it by 
evolution. But when we look on mind as nerceiving, judg¬ 
ing, discerning between good and evil, we discover that he 
has not explained its rise by his evolution ; he is not able 
to derive the rational from the irrational, or the good from 
that which has no moral perception. The fact is, his de¬ 
velopment is merely an evolution by the physical forces, 
not of the mental acts, but merely of their surroundings or 
the environment. These forces do have a powerful influ¬ 
ence on the internal or psychical powers, not in producing 
them, but in directing them in certain channels. He thus 
believes himself, and makes it appear to others, that he 
is evolving consciousness and conscience when he is merely 
developing their accompaniments, and has never looked at 
anything else. Thus with all his zeal for development, he 
has never noticed seriously the grand results produced when 
psychical, and especially moral power, is joined with phys¬ 
ical causation. 

I know full well that exclusive physicists will look down 
with contempt upon my insisting on giving the higher 
intellectual and moral powers a place in evolution. But I 
hold these to be realities quite as much as bodies, with their 
energies and the motion they produce. It is not encourag¬ 
ing to the highest thought to find how few of those who 
have produced such a revolution in biology of late years have 
ever been trained in colleges or otherwise to consider purely 
mental phenomena. I do not regard their disposition to 
set aside these as a proof of the comprehensiveness of their 


i 



50 OVERSIGHTS IN SPENCER’S EVOLUTION. 

minds, but rather of their narrowness. For myself I have 
carefully tried never to allow my devotion to mental science 
to tempt me to neglect physical and physiological facts. I 
claim that never in my teaching or in my writings have I 
set myself against any discovery in natural science which 
has turned out to be true. Our naturalists would be 
elevated if, in looking at material agencies, they did not 
overlook mental, moral, and spiritual powers. The full- 
orbed truth is discerned only by those who go round it and 
look at all its sides. Thus only can the mind be open to 
all knowledge, and become expanded in any measure corre¬ 
sponding to the width of the universe disclosed to us. 






PHILOSOPHIC SERIES . 


CRITICAL NOTICES. 


“It is a familiar experience, that there is a gain in clearness and condensa¬ 
tion when one writes anew on subjects which one has previously handled in 
more copious treatises. In truth, an author himself often feels, when he has 
finished a book, that he is just prepared to write it. The effect of the dis¬ 
cussion is to reduce his own thought to its lowest terms, and to disentangle it 
from surplus and irrelevant matter. The readers of Dr. McCosh’s pamphlets 
will in this way reap the benefit of the author's earlier and more elaborate 
consideration of the same topics. An adherent, though not a servile adherent, 
of the Scottish school, he has brought to his inquiries for many years the best 
powers of a clear and vigorous intellect and of a mind well-informed in the his¬ 
tory of speculation. * * * The titles of the numbers of “The Philosophic 
Series,” which are yet to appear, indicate that they will deal with the most in¬ 
teresting and momentous questions which are now agitated among metaphysi¬ 
cians and speculative naturalists. It is gratifying to see that the venerable 
President of Nassau Hall retains all the freshness of his youthful interest in 
these grave problems, and is disposed to present in a form so convenient to 
readers the fruit of his l'ipened powers and of the mature studies of a life which 
has been largely devoted, and with distinguished success, to philosophical re¬ 
flection.”— New York Tribune. 


“ It is not unlikely to prove true in the end that the most useful, popular 
service which Dr. McCosh has rendered to the cause of right thinking and to 
sound philosophy of life, is his philosophic series, the first number of which, 
Criteria of Diverse kinds of Truth , as opposed to Agnosticism. Being a 
treatise oti Applied Logic , we have perused with great satisfaction. Dr. Mc¬ 
Cosh has prepared in the compass of this little brochure of sixty 12 mo. pages, 
which can easily be read in a few hours, a treatise of the basis of knowledge and 
the method of reaching it, in doing this he has placed in front of the most influ- 
encial heresies of our times a luminous exposition of a sounder philosophy. 
* * * Brief as the treatise is it contains the mature conclusions of one of the 
foremost philosophers of the day and the outlines of consistent philosophy of 
life. The manual is written with directness and vigor and goes straight to the 
point of greatest need in the present condition of opinion.”— N. V. Inde¬ 
pendent. 

“The author’s clean cut classical method of putting truth before his readers, 
gives one a sense of novelty and freshness, to attain which must be the highest 
praise of a writer who follows Aristotle and Francis Bacon. * * * We rise from 
the study of this first number with a mental refreshment rarely experienced in 
the perusal of modern philosophic treatises.”— Phila. Episcopal Register. 

“Dr. McCosh’s work grows more interesting as he proceeds. There is 
something alsolutely new in his treatment of the principle of causation. He 
shows that there is a duality or plurality in causation, also a duality or plur- 






ality in the effect. The use of this fact is seen in the author’s attempt to ad¬ 
just the old doctrine of causation to the lately discovered doctrine of the con* 
servation of energy or the persistence of force. * * * Dr. McCosh’s 

style is clear, bold and fervid, often rising into eloquence. He is easily 
understood. For young men who wish to become acquainted with cor¬ 
rect methods of testing the truth, nothing could be better than this series. 
For busy men, also, this bird’s-eye view of what the author calls * a sober 
i philosophy,’ will be found invaluable. ‘ He who runs may read.’ ”— Columbus 
Gazette. 

“ This is the first of a promised series of pamphlets on some of the import¬ 
ant subjects of modern philosophy. It need hardly be said that whatever 
conies from Dr. McCosh’s pen is characterized by remarkable vigor and clear¬ 
ness and even if the tone be somewhat dogmatic, it must be remembered 
that it is the dogmatic tone of one of the ablest living leaders of Scotch 
thought. The first of the series just referred to goes over partly the ground 
of Institutions and the Logic of the same author. There has been much con¬ 
densation and there are some valuable additions. The work has been pre¬ 
pared with special reference to the Agnosticism of the day, it is sufficiently 
controversal to make it of interest to the general reader, it is sufficiently 
simple to make it of value as an academic text-book of reference.”— Presby¬ 
terian Review. 

“ This first issue deals, in a masterly way, with the very popular but sui¬ 
cidal error of agnosticism. It sets forth the criteria of first principles, the ax¬ 
ioms of reasoning, and also those of individual facts, and their laws, and thus 
teaches how to distinguish between different kinds of truth. It is thorough 
and clear, and will be very helpful to those who have become unsettled either 
by the opposing theories of scholars, or by the difficulties which surround al¬ 
most every science when investigation is carried beyond the limit of the 
knowable. The distinction here pointed out between necessary and probable 
truths is of great importance. The want of this discrimination lies at the root 
of the whole system of agnosticism ; and, we may add, of the religious dog¬ 
matism which has characterized the later theology of Rome.”— The Church¬ 
man. 

“Perhaps Dr. McCosh has done nothing more truly serviceable during his 
long and useful life, than the publishing of these most valuable pamphlets.” 
— Phila. National Baptist. 

“ Its style is so clear and direct, its presentation of the whole subject is so 
natural and forcible, that many persons who habitually ignore discussions of 
abstract topics, would be charmed into a new intellectual interest by giving 
Dr. McCosh’s work a careful consideration. ”— N. Y. Observer. 

“There are many, even of believers, who will walk with a firmer step after 
reading this masterly discussion. — Cincinnati Christian Standard. 

“This is not a controversial dissertation, but a clear and profound state¬ 
ment of the facts, and laws of intellectual and moral being as they bear 
directly on the question of spiritual knowledge, or the basis of faith. Dr. 
McCosh has the happy faculty of stating profound and abtruse reasonings and 
conclusions, with such clearness and felicity that the intellectual reader has no 
difficulty in following his thought and understanding the points he makes.”— 
N. Y. Evangelist. 




The Emotions . 

[BY 

JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., 

President of Princeton College. 

o ne Volume, crown 8vo., - $2.OO. 


In this little volume of two hundred and fifty clearly printed pages 
Dr. McCosh treats first of the elements of emotion, and, secondly, of the 
classification and description of the emotions. He has been led to the 
consideration of his theme, as he says in his preface, by the vagueness and 
ambiguity in common thought and literature in connection with the subject, 
and by “ the tendency on the part of the prevailing physiological psychol- 
ogy of the day to resolve all feeling and our very emotions into nervous 
action, and thus gain an important province of our nature to materialism.” 
The work is characterized by that “ peculiarly animated and commanding 
style which seems to be a part of the author.” 


CRITICAL NOTICES. 

“ Dr. McCosh’s style is as lucid, vigorous, and often beautiful as of old. There 
5 s never any doubt as to his meaning, nor any hesitation in his utteiance.”— Loudon 
Academy. 

“ It would be well if all who have it as the’r business to influence the character of 
men would study such a work as this on the Emotions.”— Examiner and Chronicle. 

‘‘We recommend it to all students as a perspicuous and graceful contribution to 
what has always proved to be the most popular part of mental philosophy.”— 1 he N. Y. 
Evangelist. 

“The work is marked by great clearness of statement and profound scholarship—two 
things which are not always combined. ... It will prove attractive and instructive 
to any intelligent reader.”— Albany Evening Journal. 

“The analysis is clear and the style of crystalline clearness. We are inclined to 
think it will be the most popular of the author’s works. We have read it from beginning 
to end with intense enjoyment—with as much interest, indeed, as could attach to any 
work of fiction.”— The Presbyterian. 

“ The whole subject of the volume is treated by Dr. McCosh in a common sense way. 
with large reference to its practical applications, aiming at clearness of expression and 
aptness of illustration, rather than with any show of metaphysical acuteness or technical 
nicety, and often with uncommon beauty and force of diction.”— N. Y. Tribune. 

“Apart from the comprehension of the entire argument, any chapter and almost 
every section will prove a quickening and nourishing portion to many who will ponder 
it. It will be a liberal feeder of pastors and preachers who turn- to it. The almost 
prodigal outlay of illustrations to be found from first to finis, will fascinate the reader if 
nothing else does.”— Christian Intelligencer. 


For sale by all booksellers, or sent , postpaid , upon receipt of 
trice, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 








The Conflicts of the ylge . 


One Vol., 8vo, - Paper, 50 Cts. ; Cloth, 75 Cts. 


The four articles which make up this little volume are : 

(1) An Advertisement for a New Religion. By an Evolutionist. 

(2) The Confession of an Agnostic. By an Agnostic. 

(3) What Morality have we left ? By a New-Light Moralist. 

(4) Review of the Fight. By a Yankee Farmer. 

The secret of its authorship has not yet transpired, and the reviewers 
seem badly puzzled in their attempts to solve the mystery. 


CRITICAL. NOTICES. 

“Nowhere can an ordinary reader see in a more simple and pleasing form (he 
absurdities which lie in the modern speculations about truth and duty. We have no key 
to the authorship, but the writer evidently holds a practiced pen, and knows how to give 
that air of persiflage in treating of serious subjects which sometimes is more effective 
than the most cogent dialectic/’ — Christian Intelligencer. 

“ It is the keenest, best sustained exposure of the weaknesses inherent in cer'ain 
schools of modern thought, whic 1 we have yet come across, and is couched in a vein of 
fine satire, making it exceedingly readable. For an insight into the systems it touches 
upon, and for its suggestions o methods of meeting them, it is capable of being a great 
help to the clergy. It is a new departure in apologetics, quite in the spirit of the time.”— 
The Living Church. 

“The writer has chosen to appear anonymously; but he holds a pen keen as a 
Damascus blade. Indeed, there are few men living capable of writing these papers, 
and of dissecting so thorouchly the popular conceits and shams of the day. It is done, 
too, with a coolness, self-possession, and sang-froid, that are inimitable, however un¬ 
comfortable it may seem to the writhing victims.”— The Guardian. 

“ These four papers are unqualifiedly good. They show a thorough acquaintance 
with the whole rang* of philosophic thought in its modern phases of development, even 
down to the latest involutions and convolutions of the Evolutionists, the sage unknow¬ 
ableness of the Agnostic, and the New Light novelty of Ethics without a conscience.” — 
Lutheran Church Review. 

“ These papers are as able as thev are readable, and are not offensive in their spirit, 
beyond the necessary offensiveness of belief to the believing mind/’— N. Y. Christian 
A dvocate. 

“The discussion is sprightly, incisive, and witty; and whoever begins to read it 
will be likely to read it through.”— New Rtiglandcr. 


*** For sale by all booksellers , or sent , postpaid, upon receipt of 
price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, Publishers, 

743 and 745 Broadway, New York. 











DR. McCOSH’S WORKS, 

PUBLISHED BY 

ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 

NEW YORK. 


I. 

Eleventh Thousand. 

THE METHOD OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT, 

Physical and Moral. 8vo. $2.00. 

“ It is refreshing to read a work so distinguished for originality and 
soundness of thinking, especially as coming from an author of our own 
country .”—Sir William Hamilton. 


n. 

Fourth Thousand. 


TYPICAL FORMS AND SPECIAL ENDS IN CREATION. 
By James McCosh, LL.D., and Dr. Dickie. 8vo. $2.00. 

“It illustrates and carries out the great principle of analogy in the 
Divine plans and works far more minutely and satisfactorily than it has 
been done before; and while it presents the results of the most pro¬ 
found scientific research, it presents them in their higher and spiritual 
relations. ”— Argus. 

m. 

Fifth Thousand. 

THE INTUITIONS OF THE MIND. New and improved 
edition. 8vo. $2.00. 


“ Never was such a work so much needed as in the present day. It 
is the only scientific work adapted to counteract the school of Mill, 
Bain, and Herbert Spencer, which is so steadily prevailing among the 
students of the present generation. ”—London Quarterly Revieio, April, 
1865. 

IV. 

Second Thousand. 


A DEFENCE OF FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH. Being an 
Examination of Air. J. S. Mill’s Philosophy. 8vo. $2.00. 

“ The spirit of these discussions is admirable. Fearless and courte¬ 
ous, McCosh never hesitates to bestow praise when merited, nor to attack 
a heresy wherever found .”—Congregational Revietc. 




y. 

Third Edition. 

SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY : Biographical, Expository, and 
Critical. 8vo. $4.00. 

“Dr. McCosh’s expositions of philosophical doctrine are no less re¬ 
markable for their lucidity than their fairness. Nor is his volume 
confined to the mere analysis and exhibition of speculative theories. It 
is enlivened with numerous personal details, which present the great 
names of Scotland in their domestic and social environment, and make 
its perusal as attractive as it is informing.”— Tribune. 

VI. 

Eighth Thousand. 

LAWS OF DISCURSIVE THOUGHT : Being a Text-Book 
of Formal Logic. 12mo. $1.50. 

The peculiarity of this work is that while it treats fully of the proposi¬ 
tion and reasoning , it unfolds specially the nature of the notion. 

“This little treatise is interesting as containing the matured views of 
one of the most vigorous reasoners of the times on the forms of reason¬ 
ing. It is written with singular directness and vigor. . . . The 

use of this work as a text-book in schools and colleges will afford admir¬ 
able training to students. . . . It is doubtful whether there is any¬ 

where a class-book in this science likely to be so generally acceptable.” 
—Evening Post. 

vn. 

Sixth Thousand. 

CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM. A Series of Lectures 
to the Times on Natural Theology and Apologetics. 
12mo. $1.75. 

‘ ‘ Dr. McCosh is a man of great learning, of powerful intellect, clear, 
and sharp, and bold in utterance. These lectures present the result of 
years of labor, in a form to be useful to all classes of minds, and espe¬ 
cially instructive and comforting to those who have been troubled by 
the skeptical suggestions of some modern naturalists. The volume will 
prove immensely valuable to ministers and Bible-class teachers, as it 
furnishes ready and conclusive answers to objectors and skeptics, and 
assurance to inquiring minds. It Is an able and timely book.”— Baptist 
Union. 






PHILOSOPHIC SERIES—No. Ilf. 


DEVELOPMENT 


WHAT IT CAN DO 


AND 


WHAT IT CAMOT DO 


BY 

JAMES MoCOSH, D.D., LL.P., D.L. 

Author of “The Method of Divine Government,” “Emotions,” etc. 

President of Princeton College 


NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

1883 
































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PROGRAMME OF A PHILOSOPHIC SERIES. 


For the last thirty years I have been taking my part in the philosophic 
discussions of the age. I have a few things to say before I willingly leave 
the arena. These have long occupied my tnoughts, and they relate to thrill¬ 
ing topics of the day, on w.iich many are anxious to have light thrown. In 
order to brmg my views before the thinking public, I start A Philosophic 
Series, to consist of small volumes of about sixty pages each, on stout paper, 
at Fifty Cents per volume, and issued quarterly, each embracing an exposi¬ 
tion co nplete in itself on one theme. 

Its aim is to defend Fundamental Truth, and to give assurance to think¬ 
ing minds, especially young men, in this age of unsettled opinion. It is 
opposed to Agnosticism, wuich (rather than [Skepticism) is the leading philo¬ 
sophic heresy of the day, and is unuermining some ot our most precious faiths 
—intellectual, moral and religious. I have begun with the hist number 
already published on 

No. I. The Criteria, of Diverse Kinds of Truth. It has been 
shown again and again that we have no one absolute criterion of all truth ; 
but we have now satisfactory criteria of the various kinds of truth which we 
are required to believe. I have endeavored to expound and illustrate these, 
giving the tests both of self-evident and experiential or inductive truth. The 
work is addressed to intelligent enquirers, and might be used as a text-book 
on Applied Logic. I take up Causatiou as the ntxt subject in order, - 

N >. II. Energy, Efficient and Final Cause. It is a fact that since 
the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy has been establisned, scientific 
men do nob know what to make of the doctrine of Cause and Effect, and not 
a few are disposed to set aside Final Cause and the argument from design for 
the existence of God. The old doctrines are as true as ever, but they require 
to be modified and explained ane x in comformity with recent science. This 
leads on to 

No. III. What Development can do and What it cann<~t do.— 
Religious people in the present day do not very well know what to make of 
Evolution. Some are turning it to the worst of purposes, making it super¬ 
sede the power of God. [Surely some good may be done by explaining what 
is meant by development, which is just an organized causation which under 
God does mucj, but cannot do everything. 

The Series while mainly expository, will be also critical, and will embrace 

No. IV. The Agnosticism of Hume and Huxley. It has been 
shown again and again that Agnosticism is suicidal. It is an evident contra¬ 
diction to affirm that we know that we can know nothing. But when we have 
done all this, we have only strengthened the position of Agnosticism, which 
holds that all truth is contradictory. It is of no use fighting with a spectre, 
but we can assail those who keep it up, such as Hume who started the sys¬ 
tem, and Huxley its living defender. 

No. V. A Criticism of the Philosophy of Kant— specifving its 
truths and errors. This is the most influential philosophy of the day, both 
in Europe and America. K mt has e>tablished a body of most important 
truth, but without meaning it he has admitted principles which are fitted to 
undermine our knowledge and the reality of things. 

No. VI. A Criticism of Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy as cul¬ 
minated in ms Ethics. 

*** NOTICE. — Orders and subscriptions for the entire series will be received by 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 743 & 745 Broadway, New York. 












































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